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EPISODE: #98

Anika Heavener, Vice President of Innovation and Investments at The SCAN Foundation: Ageism and the Aging Workforce

WorkforceRx with Futuro Health
WorkforceRx with Futuro Health
Anika Heavener, Vice President of Innovation and Investments at The SCAN Foundation: Ageism and the Aging Workforce
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PODCAST OVERVIEW

On this episode of WorkforceRx, we turn our attention to the challenges and opportunities of one of the fastest growing parts of the US workforce: mid-career and older employees. In fact, the percentage of people over sixty-five who are currently employed is nearly twice as high as it was in the 1990s. “The key driver of the growth we're seeing is an increase in financial insecurity for older adults. Nearly half of adults age fifty-five to sixty-six have no retirement savings,” says Anika Heavener, vice president of Innovation and Investments at The SCAN Foundation, an independent public charity focused on solutions to help adults age well. But, as Heavener explains to Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan, the financial imperative to keep working is bumping up against ageism in hiring, particularly a mistaken belief among hiring managers that older people are not well-suited to using new technologies like artificial intelligence. “Our research found that older workers have embraced AI, and they’re actively using it to enhance their work. Employers need to acknowledge and value those workers.” Tune in to this enlightening conversation to learn about other revealing research on the aging workforce and how workforce development programs can evolve to meet the needs of this important demographic, plus you’ll hear about the role of venture capital in fostering intergenerational working environments.

Transcript

Van Ton-Quinlivan

Hello, I’m Van Ton-Quinlivan, CEO of Futuro Health, welcoming you to WorkforceRx, where I interview leaders and innovators for insights into creating a future ready workforce.

 

Today, we turn our attention to the challenges and opportunities facing one of the fastest growing age groups in the workforce: mid-career and older employees. We’ll be discussing some new research on that issue and exploring how workforce development programs can evolve to meet the needs of this important demographic with Anika Heavener, vice president of Innovation and Investments at The SCAN Foundation, an independent public charity focused on solutions to help every adult age well, especially those from historically marginalized communities.

 

Through her work with the SCAN Foundation, Anika is tackling the financial challenges that affect the health and well-being of older adults through expanding quality employment opportunities. Thank you very much for joining us today, Anika.

 

Anika Heavener

It’s my pleasure, thanks for having me, Van.

 

Van

Well, we’re delighted to pepper you with questions. As I mentioned, older workers represent one of the fastest growing segments of the labor force. What are the underlying factors driving this growth?

 

Anika

Well, first and foremost, the shifts in the workplace dynamics are really astounding right now. The labor force of people that are fifty and older has grown four times faster than the US average. In 2023, nearly one in five Americans age sixty-five plus were employed, which is double the rate from thirty-five years ago according to Pew Research.

 

So, what’s underlying all this? The key driver of growth that we’re seeing is an increase in financial insecurity for older adults. Nearly half of adults age fifty-five to sixty-six have no retirement savings. That’s just really hard to wrap my head around sometimes, as I work in this space on a daily basis, that nearly half of adults age fifty-five to sixty-six have no retirement savings.

 

So for us at the SCAN Foundation, we are really trying to dig into this and understand this further. We partnered with the Aspen Institute to research the saving patterns of older adults and looking at some of the tools that they could use to better supplement, like emergency savings solutions. And what we found is that half of older adults lack sufficient savings to protect from financial shocks. There just aren’t enough solutions out there to help older adults grow their liquid savings, and for the solutions that do exist Van, they are tied to the workplace and really, not everybody has access to workplace-based accounts. So, there’s really an opportunity to design a wider range of well-designed emergency savings tools that meet the financial needs of older adults to protect them from financial shocks.

 

But beyond retirement savings, many older adults need to stay employed because social security alone doesn’t cover their expenses. The myth is that social security will be a catch-all, and roughly half of older adults rely on social security as their primary income source, and a quarter rely on it for more than 90 % of their income. And so at the SCAN Foundation — with our focus on how health and social well-being of marginalized older adults is at our core — we recognize that older adults need to be able to generate income later in life to be able to access and afford care and so we champion workforce development and quality jobs for older adults that are seeking work.

 

Van

That’s such helpful context and startling, eye-opening statistics, Anika. And so as you talk about the financial insecurity of older adults and the need to stay employed, can workforce development initiatives play into that, and how should they be structured such that they can be supportive of older adults?

 

Anika

Yeah, there’s certainly more to be done on the workforce development side when it comes to initiatives that are supporting older adults. I’m sure you can relate to this, Van: a lot of the workforce development programs have historically focused on younger populations, even though older adults face significant challenges when it comes to employment. In California alone, which is where the SCAN Foundation is based, only 10 % of Employee Training Panels (ETP) dollars, go towards training adults aged fifty-five plus across the state. And of that, only 5 % of job placement and 11 % of training enrollments are made for older fifty-five plus.

 

I want to credit our great partners at Advantage LA and Mayor Karen Bass’s office for the work that’s underway in employing, retaining, and advancing older work across Los Angeles. There’s a really great initiative underway there to improve our workforce development efforts.

 

That being said, there’s no hiding it. In today’s environment, the job market is really tough on everyone, and older adults from historically marginalized communities are facing even steeper barriers like discrimination or access to resources like rescaling programs or tech training. It’s disproportionately difficult for an older adult to regain employment.

 

Our longtime partner, AARP, did a study on adults age forty years and over working full-time or part-time or unemployed but looking for work, retired and working or even retired and looking for work. They talked to a lot of older adults. They found that a third of older adults think it is likely that they will lose their job within a year, primarily because of a weak economy and among those who are really lacking confidence, they flagged that finding a job within three months was gonna be difficult because of age discrimination.

 

So, we see this barrier not only in workforce development programs, but in ageism in the workplace and so we are funding some exciting new work to support older adults in getting fully remote and full-time workforce development training in partnership with the organization Generation USA. Our particular work in the Appalachia region focuses on a mentorship program, paid micro-internship opportunities, and connecting with employers for full-time and remote placement, specifically in the tech sales industry. We see that as a viable and long-term opportunity for older adult workers.

 

That being said, that’s just one initiative we’re supporting. We continually champion that workforce development programs need to be more inclusive. And there’s three things that we would encourage employers, but also other workforce development programs, to keep in mind. One, expanding their focus to include older adults; two, be mindful of the barriers to entry…that a lot of these programs need to provide accessible training and virtual options for rural workers or wraparound support services like transportation; and finally, that they partner with employers to promote age-inclusive hiring practices. This includes showcasing benefits of hiring older workers. They are really added-value in partnership and mentorship and having a lot of expertise and they also improve internal turnover rates and improves knowledge sharing within the institution.

 

So, part of our mission is to get the word out about the value of the older adult worker, but also make sure that the important workforce development programs are being inclusive of them and serving them as well.

 

Van

Anika, I was wondering, it’s not just a matter of getting more funding into this population and supporting, for example, wages or workforce development programs. Aren’t there also some perceptions in terms of older adults and technology? And what about AI? How is that going to impact this population? What are your thoughts?

 

Anika

Yes, naturally we can’t have a conversation or a podcast without talking about AI. It is definitely a huge influence on the way we are seeing the labor force change. And while there’s a lot of hype and excitement around AI, we also need to gut check what it is really doing to the labor markets. So, I’d like to zoom out for a minute to answer your question by just starting to think about what is the role of technology in the labor force and really, what is the value of AI to an employer?

 

It provides greater throughput, greater productivity. And of course, there’s this feeling like we’re all gonna be able to do so much more, but there’s this belief that new tech will not generate greater throughput and greater productivity for older adult workers. This is ageism in the workplace at its finest. And we really feel like this bias is already coming to bear even though AI in the workplace is still relatively new.

 

The SCAN Foundation and Google.org, we recently co-funded research with our partner, Generation.org, to explore this topic. What Generation found is that despite the potential benefits of AI to older workers, like increasing that productivity, employers continue to show a strong preference for younger candidates in hiring roles that leverage AI.

 

In the US alone, 90 % of hiring managers that we engaged with were inclined to consider candidates over thirty-five for AI roles compared to only 32 % for those over sixty. This bias overlooks the valuable combination of experience from older professionals and AI proficiency that older adults can develop and will offer. And while this research did only find that 15 % of older workers age forty-five to sixty-five plus are currently using AI in the workplace, of those that have adopted AI tools, they’re relatively self-taught and considered what we would call a power user and that they’re using AI daily.

 

So for us, the bottom line here is that while current adoption rates are low, older workers have embraced AI and are doing so independently and actively using it to enhance their work. Employers need to acknowledge and value those workers. Employers also need to help unlock the value of AI for their employees. Employer and workforce development initiatives can counteract this ageism trend by providing more inclusive training for AI tools and digital skills and making sure that the ageist hiring practices that I referenced, while they have always existed, there is a real risk for AI to exacerbate this problem.

 

Being mindful and getting the education and the word out that this is an increasing trend is part of our daily work at the SCAN Foundation.

 

Van

So Anika, you’ve laid out a possible future of work, which is one where ageism and discrimination or non-inclusiveness is rampant. But there are other futures of work that you’d like to envision. And so I would love for you to just lay out, if you had the magic wand, what would be the future of work that you would like to see happen?

 

Anika

Yeah, I’d be delighted to find that magic wand, Van, so if you see one lying around…but the ideal future of work that we talk about and envision at the SCAN Foundation is where older adults have the opportunity to participate in adaptable intergenerational workplaces that value lifelong learning. For this, employers need to embrace age diverse teams, which we already know are proven to enhance productivity and innovation. And also, we need employers to uphold the value of experience. Older workers play a critical role in transferring institutional knowledge and training younger colleagues.

That all being said, it’s definitely the ideal because right now that ideal feels really out of reach. When you look at the realities of the workforce, we look at top talent as those who grind versus those who get out there and explore and continue learning. We look to shortcuts versus developing talent, and we also look to replace talent rather than enhance and retrain.

 

We also aren’t naive to the pressures of running a business…the push for revenue, the push for growth. The challenge for the American workforce is to reap the productivity of the older adult population versus replace it or ignore it. We know that AI can supplement. We know that workforce development programs should evolve to include digital and AI skill building tailored to older workers, but we also need to strengthen mentorship programs and we firmly believe that those three things can help increase the ROI and development of any organization.

 

Van

You mentioned SCAN Foundation’s work in Appalachia and in Los Angeles. Are there any other examples that you’d like to share on models or programs that are in place to help older adults remain competitive?

 

Anika

Yeah, I would love for there to be far more than the few that I’ve rattled off today. Part of the role of SCAN Foundation is seeding those emerging opportunities and emerging investments. In addition to having a grant making and philanthropic capability, our organization has an impact investing capability as well. And so part of the investments that we’ve pursued this year, for instance with Jobs for the Future, their venture team has a second fund that they raised this year.

 

In addition, there’s our partnership with an organization called Resilience VC, a venture capital fund that focuses on financial security issues for marginalized communities. We’re looking at how we can support leveraging investment dollars and venture capital to create new companies, new initiatives that are focused on that ideal state I described earlier, where we see more adaptable, intergenerational working environments that are inclusive of older adults.

 

Van

These sound like great creative strategies. I so appreciate the SCAN Foundation putting the spotlight on to this issue. I want to close by just inviting you to have any comments or parting words to the audience who are listening in.

 

Anika

Yeah, I know it’s the start to 2025 and it’s a bright, shiny new year, but I do want to elevate to this audience just the persistent ageism that is facing the American worker right now. Seventy-eight percent of workers age fifty-plus report that they’re experiencing and observing age discrimination and many are feeling that they need to be forced out of the workforce. I think this year we can see the real potential of creating more inclusive workforces that create greater profitability, but also a greater sense of belonging, and older adults are going to be a key component to doing that.

 

Van

Well, thank you very much for being with us today, Anika, and sharing the results of your various studies, but also putting some sunshine on this issue that is faced by our communities. Thanks for being here.

 

Anika

Thanks for having me, Van.

 

Van

Absolutely. I’m Van Ton-Quinlivan with Futuro Health. Thanks for checking out this episode of WorkforceRx. I hope you will join us again as we continue to explore how to create a future-focused workforce in America.